Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is being released to impossibly high expectations. It’s not just the conclusion of Disney’s Sequel Trilogy, but bills itself as the final conclusion to the Skywalker saga that began back in 1977. As such, audiences expect the film to provide some serious closure. With the backlash against The Last Jedi still ringing in their ears, it seems that J.J. Abrams is determined to stick the landing, too, as Star Wars Topps artist and Cinelinx editor John Maison claims that the director tested eight different endings with test audiences to find the best one.
At first glance, that sounds worrying. How good can a story really be if you can have eight possible endings to it? Also, the fact that they’re getting feedback from test audiences could indicate a very safe film that’s been focus-grouped so as not to kick up any controversy whatsoever. My big fear for The Rise of Skywalker is that they’re going to revert to the nostalgia-fest of The Force Awakens and the unlikely resurrection of Emperor Palpatine doesn’t exactly bode well.
Fortunately, it seems that these endings are just subtly different from one another, perhaps even only altering the timing or sequence of shots. Maison explains that “more than likely [these are] just different approaches to the same type of scene to get the right emotional impact.”
Fingers crossed they can make this work well as right now, Disney’s Sequel Trilogy stands poised on a knife-edge in terms of its legacy in the franchise, and sticking the landing could mean the difference between it being talked of in the same breath as the Original Trilogy or the Prequel Trilogy. Thankfully, we’ll get a better idea of what’s going to happen in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on Monday, when the new teaser is revealed, before the film itself hits cinemas on December 20th.